What is the size of the time critical "road" freight market?

softwareguy · Jun 26, 2011

Hi everybody,

I'm not an operator, nor am I planning on it (self aware enough to realize that I'm not cut out for what you guys pull off

). However, I'm in San Francisco where everybody is going nuts about mobile apps so I am doing my research.

So far I have read over at transcore that the spot freight market moves about a billion tons of freight per year. The rest of the 11bn is moved by private and contract for hire carriers.

I am wondering if you have any info, estimation, guess-timation on the volume of time critical freight that is moved yearly? Another question would be what the average weight of a time critical load is. Lastly, does any of the time critical freight ever land on the spot freight market or is it pretty much completely hauled by contract carriers? I would guess that the unpredictability of load boards and such make it a really bad place for time critical loads.

The reason I am researching this is that it seems that expediters have a better grasp on technology and would be more likely to become early adopters of "the next big thing" (whatever that may be).

I thank you in advance.

Jack_Berry · Jun 26, 2011

the size and weight is all over the map. we have moved 12, 2# boxes of bushings 1100 miles, a 15 # box of bearings 800 miles, both of which could sit on the step of the side door. we have moved frt up to 2500 lbs either one piece or two.

good luck with that app button

paullud · Jun 26, 2011

The problem with getting the information is going to be if you really just want time critical freight or everything we move. I had a load of armored glass that was 1800lbs on one small pallet that was time critical because it had an appointment to be blown up, and I have had 668lbs of cooling system adapters for Ford that was going less than 400 miles but it was picked up on Friday and didn't deliver until Monday, not really time critical there. I also took an AC pump several hundred miles which was needed in a hurry, it was maybe 25lbs and about 1 cubic foot in it's box.

Posted with my Droid EO Forum App

greg334 · Jun 26, 2011

Time critical freight is all relative to one of the parties involved with the shipment - the shipper, the consignee or the carrier - and almost impossible to measure.

Moot · Jun 26, 2011

paullud said:
I have had 668lbs of cooling system adapters for Ford that was going less than 400 miles but it was picked up on Friday and didn't deliver until Monday, not really time critical there.

I'm not sure what the OP is looking for but I consider the above load time critical. Ford probably needed this stuff first thing Monday morning. An LTL carrier could have gotten it there Monday for much less money, but not first thing Monday morning.

Turtle · Jun 26, 2011

My only advice would be to not use "San Francisco" and "nuts" in the same sentence.

cheri1122 · Jun 26, 2011

Turtle said:
My only advice would be to not use "San Francisco" and "nuts" in the same sentence.

"Nuts" & "time critical" works perfectly, though - like Jack Berry said, it's all over the map. Literally. "Average" is impossible in a field that stretches from cargo vans to tractor trailers.

Jefferson3000 · Jun 27, 2011

Contact Sylectus. They are real good at crunching those numbers, which while not covering all, do cover a large portion of time critical freight.

LDB · Jun 27, 2011

Ok, you guys who must fix what isn't broken with your colors and sizes and fonts are making your posts unreadable because they are too small and less visible. You may be saying good stuff but it's a struggle to read for older eyes. Just an FYI.

Turtle · Jun 27, 2011

What are you using to read these? Phone, a laptop with Firefox?

LDB · Jun 27, 2011

A Sony Vaio and an iPad and both are fine with the default black font. With the drop in contrast of the blue color and the smaller size font combination it makes Cheri and Jack and anyone else doing that very difficult to read, comparatively.

Dakota · Jun 27, 2011

Hmmmmm, I don't have the best vision, but on my laptop the colors are just fine, I can read them just as good.
Also, when composing the post it is in blue.
Are you sure you have your screen set at 100%?

Turtle · Jun 27, 2011

With Firefox, CTRL + will make the display larger.

Jack_Berry · Jun 27, 2011

cheri1122 said:
"Nuts" & "time critical" works perfectly, though - like Jack Berry said, it's all over the map. Literally. "Average" is impossible in a field that stretches from cargo vans to tractor trailers.

cheri, please don't use nuts and berry in the same sentence. sounds like cereal.

Jack_Berry · Jun 27, 2011

LDB said:
Ok, you guys who must fix what isn't broken with your colors and sizes and fonts are making your posts unreadable because they are too small and less visible. You may be saying good stuff but it's a struggle to read for older eyes. Just an FYI.

my eyes are working just fine and are older than yours. maybe you need some e400 occuvite for the eyes. my font is the same size as the black font. stop running on battery and plug in the laptop.

my eyes are working just fine and are older than yours. maybe you need some e400 occuvite for the eyes. my font is the same size as the black font. stop running on battery and plug in the laptop.

you do know that your links in your sig line are in blue, right?

softwareguy · Jun 27, 2011

Jack_Berry said:
the size and weight is all over the map. we have moved 12, 2# boxes of bushings 1100 miles, a 15 # box of bearings 800 miles, both of which could sit on the step of the side door. we have moved frt up to 2500 lbs either one piece or two.

good luck with that app button

That is very interesting. Makes it quite difficult to turn freight tonnage into "number of loads", since it seems to be all over the place. Transcore says that 1 billion tons of freight are about 60 million loads, making the average load weight 16.5 tons but that is all freight (ltl, tl, exp., etc...) mixed together...

paullud said:
The problem with getting the information is going to be if you really just want time critical freight or everything we move. I had a load of armored glass that was 1800lbs on one small pallet that was time critical because it had an appointment to be blown up, and I have had 668lbs of cooling system adapters for Ford that was going less than 400 miles but it was picked up on Friday and didn't deliver until Monday, not really time critical there. I also took an AC pump several hundred miles which was needed in a hurry, it was maybe 25lbs and about 1 cubic foot in it's box.

Posted with my Droid EO Forum App

Maybe I worded it wrong. I didn't really mean time critical, more "all freight hauled by expediters" or maybe even better would be "all freight charged to the shipper as expedited". I am trying to figure out how much freight is charged yearly as expedited freight. That would make the boss happy because I could give him an idea of the size of the expedited freight market.

greg334 said:
Time critical freight is all relative to one of the parties involved with the shipment - the shipper, the consignee or the carrier - and almost impossible to measure.

I was under the impression that the carrier charges more for "time critical". Wouldn't that be a good place to start when seeing how much time critical freight a single carrier hauls per year?

Moot said:
I'm not sure what the OP is looking for but I consider the above load time critical. Ford probably needed this stuff first thing Monday morning. An LTL carrier could have gotten it there Monday for much less money, but not first thing Monday morning.

That's what it seems to boil down to. For me, a time critical load that was billed as time critical would be part of that market, even if a week late because of whatever reason.

Jefferson3000 said:
Contact Sylectus. They are real good at crunching those numbers, which while not covering all, do cover a large portion of time critical freight.

Thank you for the lead! I'll be checking them out

greg334 · Jun 27, 2011

softwareguy said:
I was under the impression that the carrier charges more for "time critical". Wouldn't that be a good place to start when seeing how much time critical freight a single carrier hauls per year?

Nope

The carrier may "charge" as a normal part of their business but overall the cost of time critical is marginally more than some if not a lot of LTL/TL freight.

A lot of the time it is the 'extras' that drive up the rate - lift gate, reefer, special handling, people in nice uniforms with their name on them.

For example one company here has everything on a time critical move, they do this as part of their business practices, even if the customer does not need it yesterday but next Tuesday.

BUT when you come down to it, it seems you have to actually read carefully with what I say as this is what I'm told which is not by drivers or owners or even recruiters but people looking at the numbers to make strategic business moves - you have to define what is time critical by the way of the customer who depends on the service. Their reasoning is simple, someone in the service chain makes that a time critical shipment and it is where if the customer doesn't consider it time critical, then it isn't but how can one qualify it as a time critical without knowing each shipment's requirements.

softwareguy · Jun 27, 2011

Turtle said:
My only advice would be to not use "San Francisco" and "nuts" in the same sentence.

would "going bananas" leave the more appropriate visual?

softwareguy · Jun 27, 2011

greg334 said:
Nope

The carrier may "charge" as a normal part of their business but overall the cost of time critical is marginally more than some if not a lot of LTL/TL freight.

A lot of the time it is the 'extras' that drive up the rate - lift gate, reefer, special handling, people in nice uniforms with their name on them.

For example one company here has everything on a time critical move, they do this as part of their business practices, even if the customer does not need it yesterday but next Tuesday.

BUT when you come down to it, it seems you have to actually read carefully with what I say as this is what I'm told which is not by drivers or owners or even recruiters but people looking at the numbers to make strategic business moves - you have to define what is time critical by the way of the customer who depends on the service. Their reasoning is simple, someone in the service chain makes that a time critical shipment and it is where if the customer doesn't consider it time critical, then it isn't but how can one qualify it as a time critical without knowing each shipment's requirements.

I see what you mean. I just figured that it is as clear as fedex express: I pay $60 for overnight or I pay $10 to get it there with fedex ground in a week. From the sounds of it, expedited freight is much more intertwined with "normal" freight.

However, all of you serve a niche because there is demand for this niche. There has to be some way to quantify that demand, otherwise how do carriers like FedEx custom critical (or any other carrier) make strategic business decisions? They must have enough data to forecast future demand for expedited freight, opposed to "normal" freight.